Udacity launches new ‘Learn ARKit’ program

Udacity, the Silicon Valley-based life-long learning platform, announced its new ARKit Nanodegree Foundation Program in collaboration with Unity, the VR development firm. To help people engage with this budding technology, Udacity and Unity are also offering Udacity's VR Developer Nanodegree Program.

Immersive technologies and their applications are seen to be the future of visual storytelling. Virtual or Augmented reality already exists in nascent forms, and the development of this arena offers developers the potential to reach more users than ever before. ARKit is the largest immersive technology platform in the world, and Apple recently announced that ARKit is coming to 400 million iOS devices in 2017.

Learning ARKit represents a significant competitive advantage for developers seeking to launch or advance a career in the field of immersive technology and it is access to this opportunity that Udacity seeks to facilitate through its latest program.

The ARKit Nanodegree Foundation Program, a month-long, this single-term program will teach students everything they need to know to build AR applications using ARKit with Unity or Swift. From gaining an understanding of visual inertial odometry and underlying computer vision mechanisms, the course shall also teach students how to build a variety of ARKit applications that will enable them to place virtual objects and add dynamic lighting effects to a real-life scene in real time.

Udacity’s VR Developer Nanodegree Program initiated its collaboration with Unity. The program, a 3-term and 6-month course is designed to make students become VR developers.

Immersive technologies, especially on mobile platforms, are likely to show explosive growth in the coming years. As reported recently by TechCrunch, the market for VR/AR is predicted to be USD 108 billion by 2021, with AR taking up USD 83 billion of the total. The potential for this industry isn’t just in terms of market size, but in terms of a paradigm shift into a different way of creating visual media. It carries the potential for entire industries—healthcare, education, entertainment, real estate, retail, automotive, and more—to fundamentally change how they impact and inform the customers they serve.